Library is an exhibition conceived for UOVO Open Office Berlin, forming part of the second in a series of open offices by the magazine involving the production of issues in locations beyond their Turin based headquarters.

The exhibition takes as its starting point its location—an office open for artists, curators, writers and the general public to participate in the production of the magazine directly—and addresses the conditions under which it takes place—responding to a magazine’s desire to adopt an exhibition paradigm as a magazine issue. Revolving around the idea of a magazine as a possible location for artwork, Library consists of a variety of magazines all of which demonstrate instances in which artists have utilised this format as a space for art making. The resulting presentation, on show in Berlin for the first time, emerges from an invitation to a number of international based artists to participate with magazines in they have conceived specific projects, artworks or other forms of artistic contributions. Featuring magazines produced in a variety of places globally; the display comprises issues primarily from the early 90s to the present day. Ultimately, Library sets out to offer a short history in which the magazine has been used beyond its conventional means and instead as a site for art and exhibition making.

Pivotally, Library will take the form of library as well, by which all of the magazines included will be ordered alphabetically according to the participating artists surnames and with each being able to be viewed individually or collectively in a dedicated reading area. In addition, the exhibition’s inventory will expand in time, with the number of participating artists set to increase over the course of the exhibition. At a later date, Library will take place in other locations elsewhere.

Tuesday, 19 August 2008

The next UOVO Open Office will take placebetween 03/09/08 and 07/09/08 in Berlin. UOVO hasinvited french artist Davide Balula to contributeas guest editor. Davide will collect sounds during theOpen Office and will edit daily podcasts and a sound piecethat will feature on the next UOVO sampler.

UOVO and Davide Balula would like you to join the processby sending us some sounds : recorded ambiances, phoneconversations, vintage sounds... it can be whatever you likebut you need to own the copyright of the material you send.

Proyectos Monclova is delighted to announce the exhibition Out Of Sight, curated by Adam Carr.

Reveling in obscurity, the overlooked and the unknown, Out Of Sight sets out to see if the notion of discovery is still viable or pertinent when presenting exhibitions and in particular artists and their works. Presenting the work of four artists, although as ordinary as this may seem, at the essence of this exhibition, however, are artists not part of the commonplace, alighting instead in the unfamiliar. Each has been chosen for their individual, unorthodox practices, as well as questions they pose—albeit at times unintentionally—on the role of the artist and the conditions under which artwork is commonly produced.

Art and life is often intertwined, but what happens when disappearing becomes a life long project? What happens when artists decide to stop producing work or simply vanish without a trace? Can artists choose to operate at the very fringes on the artworld? What happens if their work forces them to do so? Can working collaboratively eschew notions of individual authorship and notoriety in unique ways? Can newness be new while being old? While the included artists offer answers to these questions and while they can serve as descriptions of their case stories, pivotally, the conditions and ideas surrounding the above are also the subjects and starting points of their work.

Alfred Johansen (b.1924 Denmark) produced very few pieces before later disappearing. He took the spirit of performances, pushing a conceptual approach to making art to new levels, in works of which no one could ever see. Mary Aurory (b.1959 Morocco, lives and works in Antwerp) project is concerned obscure, lesser-known artists while opting to not be noticed at all. Jacob Golden (b.1970 Germany, lives and works in Vienna) has a career in producing art involving acts of theft; every exhibition is a risk for him. A feature of an ARTnews article in 1969, Oscar Neuestern (b.1948 US) only allowed access to his work at the turn of century, his project was the concept of the absolute—his entire career is founded and built on absence.

Currently, where it could be argued that demand exerts a considerable force on the biography of an artist, the production of art as well as its exhibition and reception, Out Of Sight presents artists who offer a different outlook. Their work amplifies the possibility of and for change, marking uncharted territories of art production and avoiding as well a sense of over production or exposure. They remain elusive as if it were a masterpiece—choreographing life itself.

- This exhibition will evolve and tour to other venues in the future.- Adam Carr is an independent curator and writer based currently in London.- A catalogue will be produced at the end of the exhibition featuring installation images, an essayby the curator and texts on the works on display. This can be ordered by contacting the gallery, emailing: info@proyectosmonclova.com or calling: +52 (55) 5563 715.- For further information, please contact the gallery.

Take a thoughtful yet provocative pause during Art Basel 39 and pose a question or questions to be answered by a panel of internationally known contemporary artists and, if selected, published in the upcoming issue of UOVO magazine.

The Challenge, a.k.a. 'The Rub'The four artists have been selected, BUT neither their names nor any other identifying details will be revealed until Sunday, 8 June, 13:00, after the questions have been submitted.

Deadline for submissions:Sunday, 8 June, 13:00

Email your BURNING QUESTION to rainalf@gmail.com or drop it of at the UOVO Open Office (Rosental-Garage AG / Riehenstrasse 163 – 4058 Basel)Also including your name, hometown, occupation and contact details.(Please note, your contact information will not be published. It will only be used by UOVO to contact you if your question is selected for publication)

Tuesday, 3 June 2008

As the music editor of UOVO magazine, i've asked some artists, curators and galerists to send us a list of the ten songs / records that saved their lives. All the playlists were turned into podcasts that will be available on UOVO's website on a daily basis during the BASEL art fair. The past UOVO samplers will also be available as podcasts (check the podcasts schedule below, the podcasts should be available from 12:00 everyday and every two hours after)

THE STORE takes as its starting point the location of the gallery – Vilnius, a place in which the art market has just begun – and its occasion – the galleries inaugural exhibition – to form a celebration of the art object while aspiring to provide critical reflection on the manner by which it operates in the eyes of the art market.

All of the artists included in THE STORE have been invited to participate with works that will available to the general public. The result is an inventory comprising artwork by over 25 international artists, as well as projects curated by other people, all of which can be purchased at relatively small prices or be taken away for free. THE STORE therefore offers artworks to a mass audience usually conserved in a private gallery context for a selective few, and in doing so aims to offer a new experience not only within private commercial galleries but for exhibition going entirely. Interestingly, by making purchases from the goods on offer – selecting a pair of keys, a poster and not say a slice of a cake and/or a napkin, for example – viewers will in effect be curating their own shows for which can be taken away with them. This shifts the role of the spectator into consumer and active participant, and in response to their activity, the exhibition will be subjected to perpetual change, order and reorder – altering both its form and meaning.

Adam Carr is an independent curator and writer currently based in London. For further information concerning the exhibition, please contact the gallery or see in store.

Friday, 18 April 2008

Middle-aged man shot by a teen boomhead who was blasting noise along with gunfire... Faits Divers is a French journalistic term for 'Human Interest' stories, a way to provide an encounter with the unexpected and extraordinary ruptures in the quotidian. The art world itself often gains coverage in the mainstream press under the rubrique of Fait Divers: a performance practice or an artist’s intervention similarly engages the directness, immediacy and 'realness' that defines the seduction of Fait Divers in popular media. According to Roland Barthes, it is its immanence which defines the Fait-Divers: 'disasters, murders, rapes, accidents, thefts, all this refers to man, to his history, his alienation, his hallucinations, his dreams, his fear.'Issue 17, with ideas, reactions, chronicles and (Old) News from all over the Art-World, an opinionated guide to artists-run spaces, interviews and projects, features breaking news and current affairs – faits divers for Faiths-Divers.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — PEOPLE

HELLO: 220 daysYoann Gourmel and Elodie Royer with Adam Carr

Tony Conrad with Hans Ulrich Obrist

This One’s Optimistic Adam McEwen with Raina A. Lampkins-Fielder

Affecting AbstractionsFalke Pisano with Lillian Davies

Uncertain PilgrimGareth Moore with Andrew Bonacina

I’m Interested in Using the Image to Erase ItselfJesse Ash with David Lewis

Yes or No, Yes and NoTris Vonna-Michell with Adam Carr

A Multiple ‘I’Omer Fast with Joanna Fiduccia

A Presence You Can’t AvoidTania Bruguera with Francesco Stocchi

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — TXT

General IdeaHans Ulrich Obrist with AA Bronson

Short Introduction to Old Newsby Jacob Fabricius

Museum of Conceptual Art (MOCA) 1970-1984by Tom Marioni

The Art Chronicles / Les Faits Diversby Marcel Janco

Scary Scenes (on the Side of Compassion)Angelo Di Marco with Clovis Goux

Observing the Observatoryby Rony Levy

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — VIEW

An Opinionated Guide to Commercialand Non-commercial Spaces Run by ArtistsCurated by Marcel Janco

Tuesday, 25 March 2008

Coming Soon : UOVO/17: Faits diversThe newest issue of UOVO, freshly relooked for 2008 is about to come out.UOVO will be presented in various cities in the upcoming weeks.We are also delighted to introduce our new books released with TheBookmakers Ed. The first monograph with Kent Henricksen is out, and we have other projects on the way! speak soon !NEW YORKMarch 27-30. 2008. UOVO Booth at PULSE.http://www.pulse-art.com/pulse-art-new-york.html

Tuesday, 22 January 2008

UOVO is looking for a young, enthusiastic and talented freelance marketing and sponsorship manager, located in New York City, London or Paris. Applicants should have a strong knowledge of the art market: artists, galleries and art fairs; and havefirst-hand experience with selling advertising space and sponsored issues.

Applicants should also have a good knowledge of the current press market. Please send your resume (email only) to info@thebookmakers.net before 15/03/08.

Thursday, 6 December 2007

Miami is as hot as it gets... We just opened our show tonight, in the Design District.

Erasing the Edge, a project conceived and curated by Uovo magazine and Micaela Giovannotti, on display until sunday 9th of december. Created on the occasion of Uovo/16, the first 2008 issue, which is focused on the relationship between art and architecture, man and environment.

Tuesday, 27 November 2007

Yvon Lambert, Paris, is pleased to announce the exhibition Without, curated by Adam Carr, that will take place at Sidewalk, a new space situated on the lower and ground floors of the gallery.

This exhibition, without any conventional reason or theme that commonly brings works together, reactively sets out to devise a partial dialogue with the exhibition occupying the main space of the gallery, which will open and close concurrently. It takes as its starting point the artist Jonathan Monk, yet this show, among other aspects, will be about the artist but will be without the artist.

The beginnings of Monk’s work – and its primary point of investigation – stems, in essence, from other artist’s ends. Without presents artworks by six international artists made between 2000 and 2007 – but not produced specifically for this exhibition – which continue this process of production, yet more significantly for the exhibition, have used Monk’s work, or himself – via the lens of each artist’s practice – in various ways, and in different circumstances directly.

Sunday, 30 September 2007

How do we define our role in the world? This is the question asked by Danish artist Tue Greenfort, who sees humanity as a marginal part of a far greater whole and who identifies a close link between the question of progress—be it technical, cultural or interpersonal—and our ability to rethink our position in the world. Greenfort’s works reflect his interest in issues of ecology and economics: thinking in global terms, he examines our approach to environmental protection and biodiversity, to resources and sustainable development in view of dwindling supplies of certain materials, relating these themes to the system of art.

Tue Greenfort’s projects are characterized by interdisciplinary openness and a “scientific” approach based on extensive research. MEDUSA, the artist’s first major solo exhibition in Austria, focuses on the complex links between monoculturalization and its consequences, such as the loss of diversity and habitats, both in nature and in urban public space. The show occupies spaces throughout the Secession building, including some not usually used for exhibitions.

By setting up a caviar bar in the former café of the Secession, Greenfort focuses attention on the links between the caviar trade—an extremely lucrative business, with a kilogram of beluga caviar costing up to 7000 euro—and the threat of extinction to the beluga sturgeon (Huso huso), one of the Earth’s oldest species. In spite of a UN convention protecting it, poaching seems to be beyond any form of control. Greenfort relates this development to a notion of luxury and wealth, and to cultural production, the idea of art as a luxury and market value as opposed to autonomous artistic work. In cooperation with WWF Austria and the Austrian Finance Ministry, the artist was able to obtain caviar confiscated by the customs authorities, which he presents as a readymade. This precious commodity is displayed embedded in a narrative of the history of preindustrial sturgeon fishing using historical photographs.

In another project developed specially for the Secession in cooperation with Vienna Butterfly House, Greenfort focuses on the threat posed to biodiversity by structural changes to habitats in the spread and intensification of monocultures. In each of a series of brief interventions by performer Mia Parmas, visitors to the exhibition will be shown a living specimen of an exotic species of butterfly that is threatened with extinction and which is therefore being bred at the Butterfly House. The exclusivity of the exotic species is contrasted—also in terms of its unspectacular appearance—with the common European cabbage white that is able to adapt perfectly to monocultures and thus to today’s living conditions. This species is presented in the form of a specimen prepared by the artist in the style of traditional natural history collections. Thus the usual scale of values is inverted, using this moment of fleetingness to call into question both artistic forms of representation and the values of collectors.

Monday, 30 July 2007

Issue # 14 presents interviews, essays, projects and two CDs around art practices that resist the spectacularisation or romanticisation of ecological issues or the natural world. Instead their practices explore the operational function and processes of ecosystems themselves, a capacity to comprehend connections and transgress disciplines and boundaries while addressing the uniformly conflicted future of the planet. In a world where one of the US government's recent senior environmental appointees (Allan Fitzsimmons) has been supporting his view for nearly a decade that ecosystems do not exist, such artistic provocations – with a keen understanding of the new post-environmental world – can only be valuable for our collective sanity.

The issue was launched in Art Basel's Art Lobby on the 17 June – see a slideshow in the Gallery.

The Moment You Realise You Are Lost is an exhibition that presents the work of 12 international artists of whom are all unknown to a larger audience, particularly in Germany. One of the central aims of this exhibition resides in a desire to resuscitate and rejuvenate a vital objective behind the purpose of exhibition-making: to form a situation which above all fosters the opportunity for discovery. The work of the included artists, however, functions in contrast to ideas of location and detection by rather sharing an inherent desire to conceal these aspects through various means.

Despite being currently situated at an early stage in the development of their artistic positions, or relatively unexposed to a broad range of audiences, the participating artists share in common a rich, erudite and often densely complex articulation of their ideas. Characterised by an aspiration to position the viewer ambivalently yet never to alientate, the included artists focus on a particular performativity with which they seek to foreground the poetic, the fleeting and the unknown, and to be affirmatively suggestive rather than explicit. Their constellations of work embrace a fusion of fact and fiction, truth and false, and thus push for disorientation and an amplification of doubt. Opting to diverge from being entirely solved, found and uncovered instantaneously, these artists choose instead for their works to operate more covertly.

The Moment You Realise You Are Lost brings together artworks that will introduce a speculative inquiry yet offer very few entirely conclusive answers. Some of the included works are marked by traces of performances which have previously taken place, whilst others take on this strategy though wholly belie the precise course of actions that brought them into being; they appoint to disguise themselves within other works on display or recover ideas lost by others. Some works reveal interlaced histories or offer information unknown; they might partly operate outside of the exhibition space, even taking place beyond the scheduled dates of the exhibition. In addition, the installation, set-up, as well as the dissemination of the exhibition, will be premisedon and interfered with by a number of the included works unexpectedly. In exploration of this exhibition, it seems like these artists like to entice the viewer for a walk in the dark, in some cases, quite literally.

Adam Carr is an independent curator and writer currently based in London.

For further information concerning the exhibition, please contact the gallery.

Friday, 1 June 2007

Here are some photos of the "insane" party we made to present G-e-n-o-v-e-s-i's straight-jacket shirt, with doctors, nurses, pills, vodka drips, drinks and guests (on a crazy evening, of course). It was called Session 13...www.g-e-n-o-v-e-s-i.com

Extraordinary Rendition brings together the work of nine international artists in response to notions of risk, frictionlessness and the abstraction of potentialities. It includes work in video, sculpture, audio, painting and drawing.

Following a pre-modern discourse of danger, the emergence of risk – alongside the invention of insurance – proposed a world governed by immaterial markets that were no longer regulated by order, but by fundamental uncertainty, threat and insecurity. For its contextual backdrop, the exhibition attempts to think of the present as a cultural mythology through manifestations and elaborations of this principle. One could cite the orchestration of illusory energy and finance markets, the manipulation of governance and property, or the clandestine rendition of terror suspects. (Correspondingly, the Enron scandal, corruption uncovered by operation Malaya in Marbella, or CIA stop-offs in Palma de Mallorca, for example.) Furthermore, there are the unpredictable mega-weather events or reckless insurgencies that are also symptomatic of an ever more stochastic and violent reality which similarly escapes an ordinary logic of probabilities or worth. Social sensitivity to issues of security are rapidly changing our society. Alongside this global picture, our everyday lives – especially with respect to children – are increasingly subject to a suffocating psychology of risk aversion.

Attempts to render risk – notoriously, the US Department of Homeland Security's colour-coded threat advisory system – are necessarily unspecific and speculative to an extraordinary degree. In an attempt to explore this territory, the exhibition conceives of a platform that is both purely fictional and yet perfectly real, that is completely banal while exceptional, and is potentially valuable yet utterly worthless. Extraordinary Rendition explores multivalent artistic modes – from the journalistic to the comical, the literal to the allusive – within a set-up (the commercial art trade) that is, after all, itself a paradigmatic immaterial/dematerialised market.

Some Time Waiting is a unique exhibition that brings together the work of over 15 international artists. Uniting both thematic and conceptual approaches to exhibition-making, the exhibition focuses on works that explore notions of waiting, delay and anticipation. In addition, the central ideas addressed by the included works serve as the premise for the actual setup and installation of the exhibition itself.During the exhibition run, Some Time Waiting will encompass different arrangements of artists and their work by way of a changing display. This follows from the provisional and temporal nature of a number of the included artworks, or a distinct change in the treatment of the exhibition: from a preceding solo presentation of the work of Mungo Thomson (January 25th – February 11th 2007) to the setting and environment of a group exhibition, structured in response to the work and as a means to overcome the spatial limitation of the exhibition space. In doing so, the exhibition aims to investigate the idea of a group exhibition as a programme that aspires to transcend the notion of art presentation as a static and unalterable configuration.A number of the works included in the exhibition turn to the subject of waiting as a utopian gesture, in particular, being reflective of an optimistic outlook for the future. Other pieces induce feelings of ambivalence, uncertainty or despair; or remind us that waiting can be much more than just an innocent game of patience, but rather an indicative outcome of a political reality suppressing and hindering our daily progress. Fundamentally, what defines and characterises the artworks is a particular performativity and latent inaction, which sets to animate the exhibition space and thus position viewers as ‘active’ spectators rather than passive or ancillary subjects.

Adam Carr is an independent curator and writer based in Paris and London.

Monday, 12 February 2007

UOVO #13 (COLOUR SPECTRUM) MARCH 2007Mind and BrainUOVO 13 will display interviews, essays, projects and works about and around the theme of the brain, amid Art and Science. For a human brain contains synapses and memories, grey matter and dreams, concepts and obsessions, numbers, instincts... A range of capabilities to be spread or measured up, a whole rainbow of activities: implications and suggestions are converging from different disciplines, from neurology to sociology, from installation to photography. Impressions illusions and knowledge of the world outside compared to our impressions, illusions and knowledge of our inner world are themes held together like in an exhibition. The brain is wider than the sky (Emily Dickinson).Artists: Douglas Gordon by Michele Robecchi, Olaf Nicolai by Francesco Stocchi, Ryan McGinley by Ana Finel Honigman, Jesper Just by Lorenzo Bruni, Manfredi Beninati by Norma Mangione, Emily Wardill by Silvia Sgualdini, Geoffrey Farmer by Andrew Bonacina. Sampler: The Earlies, Spektrum, i:Cube, Akron/family, Metronomy, Francesco Tristano...The magazine will be presented in early April.

UOVO #14 (GREEN) JUNE 2007: Ecology, Luxury and Degradation – guest edited by LatitudesUOVO 14 '(GREEN) Ecology, Luxury and Degradation' will present interviews, essays and projects around art practices that resist the spectacularisation or romanticisation of ecological issues or the natural world. Instead their practices explore the operational function and processes of ecosystems themselves, a capacity to comprehend connections and transgress disciplines and boundaries while addressing the uniformly conflicted future of the planet. In a world where one of the US government's recent senior environmental appointees (Allan Fitzsimmons) has been supporting his view for nearly a decade that ecosystems do not exist, such artistic provocations – with a keen understanding of the new post-environmental world – can only be valuable for our collective sanity.

The magazine will be presented in early June coinciding with the openings of the 52nd Venice Biennial, Art Basel, Documenta 12 and Skuptur Projekte Münster, the 2 week 'art marathon'...

Over the last few years we've been witnessing the growing popularity of digital media, which give almost instant access to world events. However, there are certain projects in publishing which don't seek this kind of immediacy. The magazines presented here have a different viewpoint; they deal with contemporary attitudes and visual production using varying formats, often using essay-type strategies in both visual and text formats, and try to awaken the curiosity and complicity of the reader...